Red Sox/Yankees games are easily the biggest draw in baseball, though the ratings are less impressive than they were a year ago.
ESPN drew a season high 2.7 rating for Red Sox/Yankees on Sunday night, up 69% from a 1.6 for the comparable Braves/Padres game last year. The game finished with 4.1 million viewers, surpassing the previous season high of 3.9 million viewers for a Yankees/Red Sox game in April.
The game finished as the seventh most viewed program of the week on cable, behind only NASCAR, the WWE and USA Network’s Sunday night line-up.
While the numbers are impressive for regular season baseball, they pale in comparison to Yankees/Red Sox games last year. This season, two Sunday Night Baseball games between the rivals have averaged a 2.7 rating with 4.1 million viewers, down 21% and 24% from a 3.4 with approximately 5.1 million viewers for three games last year.
